Backstory Oneshots: Misc
by SJlikeslists
Summary: There were seven years of Terra Nova before the Shannons got there. Everyone (including the Shannons) had lives before Terra Nova ever existed.
1. Boylan

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Boylan

It was not the mysterious dead body that made him execute a change in careers. Maybe it should have been. It might mean that he was just a little bit on the far side of crazy that it was not. Nate had asked him for his help. That was all there was to it. In those days, that was all that was required. It was one of those quirks that came of having served at each other's sides and had each other's backs on so many occasions - favors asked were favors granted. You did not deny help to someone that had been through the things together that he and Nate had. He had helped him bury the body. He had not asked any questions. It had seemed the thing to do at the time. Even now, years and lifetimes of choices later, he cannot say whether or not that level of camaraderie being gone from his life is something that he will ever get used to not having. He supposes that it does not matter.

You cannot change the past. He knows that better than he knows anything else. The fact that he knows that it does you no good to dwell on what might or could or would leaves him better off than most of the people around him so far as he can figure. He did Nate his favor. He helped out his mate. The body was never found, and no one else was the wiser for it. He knows it was no one from the colony. There were too few of them in those days for everyone to not know everyone else. That there was some sort of a scheme going on in the background was not a difficult thing to deduce, but he did not trouble himself about it.

Nate got cooler around him in the aftermath, but the truth was that Nate was cooler to most everyone about in the time after his son first went missing. Tom kept doing his job. The colony went on as planned. Life continued.

He was four yards away when Casey lost his legs. It could oh so easily have been him confined to that chair. It could have been him buried in that collection of graves out on the edge of the colony. It could have easily been Casey in one of those graves. It could have been anyone in one of those graves. Any of them could end up under the ground at any point in time. That was nothing new to him as a general concept. He was a soldier. He always knew that it was a possibility - a strong one given some of the places that he had been deployed. He was very familiar with his own mortality. The problem was that they had all gotten caught up in the wonder of the rift and the possibilities that it afforded. It might have been just him, but somewhere in the process of being chosen to come to this place and escape from the slow death that all of the powers that be were insisting was coming for them back at home he had let his thinking get twisted that they were really escaping. They were not.

You cannot escape from being human. Everyone has a countdown clock. It does not matter what world you are inhabiting. All the things that humans do, the choices that they make, the whims of chance that ended with someone standing in one spot while someone else was standing in the one that turned out to be the wrong place to stand that day was going to be with them no matter where it was that they went.

That was the day that he started counting down the time. Everyone had a termination date for their enlistment, of course, but it never seemed to occur to anyone here that they would do anything other than renew their commitments. He was the first (aside from Casey, of course, who had already been honorably discharged due to his medical circumstances). Tom was the first to leave of his own volition.

Nate had never forgiven him for it. He did not think that he ever would.

It was of little matter. He had his bar, and he had a life here - one that he could never have had back on the other side of the portal. If nothing else, he owed Nate something for that. That did not change the fact that he had served the time that he had promised to serve, and he had no intention of serving any longer. He could say that with confidence now, but the truth was that even with the countdown in the back of his head that had started after he had found his hands covered in Casey's blood as he tried to help him hold on until the medic could get to him he still might not have walked away when the time came if it had not been for the families that started coming through the portal after the Third.

The spouses and children of those who had volunteered for the First and Second when no one was sure that this was not really a suicide mission had started coming in on the Fourth. He had no one coming. There was no one to bring. He could look around and see those who were doing this for their families. He could pick out which ones were here because they were idealists who wanted to make something better. He could pick out the research fanatics and those who would have followed Nate wherever he went simply because it was Nate. He realized that he fit into none of those categories. Everyone had their reasons - everyone except him. He might have had some in the beginning, but whatever they were they were long gone.

That realization in the days as he came to the end of his obligations set his path forward. He did not know his own why. That might not matter to anyone else, but it mattered to him.


	2. The Taylor Dynamic from Wash's View

_The Taylor Dynamic from Wash's View_

She was not there. She had been injured - one of her worst actually (and she had a fairly lengthy list available for comparison). They had med-evaced her earlier in the week. Of all of the things that could cause her to wake up drenched in sweat and struggling to breathe, it seemed the height of unfairness that the thing that did so most often was the one that she had not been present to see. Although, it was a likely guess that what was haunting her so many years later was not what had happened, but the fact that she had not been present to do anything about it.

Somehow, that made it worse - the knowing not that she had tried and failed at something, but that she had not tried at all because she had not been there when they needed her. They had been her friends; they had been her family, and she had not been there to have their back when they needed her the most. She was not sure if she would ever be able to let go of that; she was not sure that it would be appropriate to try.

She was not the only one who had the echoes of what had happened hanging over her head. Two of the Taylors may have come back from Somalia, but all three of them had never really left. Being a soldier carried a lot of baggage with it. She had always known that, but everything that had occurred in the aftermath of the taking of that city in a land far away from any available help for the unit she had left behind was a special kind of baggage that everyone who went through it (and everyone who cared for those who had) were never going to be able to leave completely behind.

You learned to live with things. You learned to keep going and push back the sick feeling that accosted you in unguarded moments in your sleep. It was part of the life. It was part of the price you paid for seeing the things that you had seen. The other choice was to shut down. That had never been Alicia's style. It had never been Nathaniel's. It had never been Ayani's. It was a pity that her friends' child had not seemed to inherit the better parts of their character.

She knew that was not entirely fair, but life was not fair. It wasn't supposed to be. It just hurt her heart at times to think about how all of her friend's motherly pride seemed to have been wasted on a man who could not move on from being a hurt child. She would never suggest that Nathaniel had not made the right decision - he had. He knew he had. It was the only decision that Ayani would have accepted. That Lucas would never understand that was something that had been clear to her from the first time she had seen him after it was all over.

The little boy that she had babysat - the one who had talked to her about puzzles and how excited he was when he and his mother were allowed to come to whichever place it was that his father was currently stationed - was nowhere to be found in the eyes that should have looked familiar to her. There was something missing - something that made you feel like you should shift your eyes to the side to avoid further contact. It was not until some time later that she realized that what was missing was sanity.

There had been talk of trauma and counseling. There had been mentions of the way that the boy threw himself into his studies as signs of him coping and learning to focus on the future. Maybe the people who said such things actually believed them; Alicia did not. There had been trauma; there was a new found focus. She would grant them that, but there was also something deeply, deeply wrong that did not improve. It just got glossed over and hidden better.

She had never said that to Nathaniel. That was another burden for her to bear. Should she have said something? Should she have tried to offer some sort of a warning? She still did not know. She had wanted to be wrong. It did not matter anymore. Lucas had disappeared in the jungle, and there was always the chance that he might never make an appearance again. Nathaniel mourned quietly just as he had done when Ayani was gone. Quietly was the way he handled his personal issues, and she was not going to interfere.

Ayani would have told her to let the stubborn man have his moody days. She would have pointed out that going off by himself in the jungle like her son had done was just the way his father would have behaved if he did not have responsibilities that he felt required to see through. That was the way that the two of them were the same. Alicia knew that the fact that Lucas would never see anything outside of his own wants as important enough to interfere with what he wanted was the way that the two of them were different.

Ayani would have laughed. She had loved her husband and son very dearly, but she had always been the first to recognize their faults. Of course, if Ayani had been around to make comments or laugh over Alicia's observations, then the whole other mess would never have happened.

"They are all or nothing - my menfolk," Ayani had told her once with a shake of her head and a fond sigh. "They neither one of them know how to do anything by parts and pieces. They are too alike to not grate on each other, and they are too different to get where the other is coming from. I'm not quite sure how it is that they have managed that, but they have."

"It's a good thing that they're both petrified of making you angry then," she had quipped.

"A good thing indeed," Ayani had replied pushing a cup of tea at her and turning the topic to other things.

That good thing had been ripped away from them, and the Taylor men had not been able to stand through it. It was like Ayani had said - they were too alike in their emotions to realize that they were both feeling the same things; they were two different to understand why the other one was feeling that way. They had crumbled. It happened. Lots of families lost their hold on being a family when the peacemaker was gone or the center of things was removed. What most families did not end up with was a clear vendetta on the part of one of the members to damage one of the other members in whatever manner they could conceive and bring to be.

The saddest part of it all was that they were missing out on the comfort of the only other person who was capable of knowing what it was that they had lost. Then again, people had a nasty habit of not putting much thought into what it was that was best for them - that was, after all, why they had needed to go through the rift in the first place.


	3. Mira on the Marcos Children

_Mira on the Marcos Children_

Sam and Leah Marcos grate on Mira's nerves. It is not that there is anything wrong with them. They are as well-behaved as any children of their ages that she has ever been around (not that that is an overly large sample for her to pull information from), and they follow directions well enough. Mira just does not like them. That has nothing to do with them. They could be any children at all, and she would feel the same way about having them there. It is not about Leah. It is not about Sam. It is that she cannot see either one of them without wondering why it is them and not her daughter. They are a living, breathing reminder that someone else was given an opportunity that she was not.

Mira has done a lot of pretending to be something she is not over the years. She has done a lot of lying for a wide variety of reasons. What she has never lied about or pretended was that she was a woman who had much in the way of tolerance for people who got things she felt she had earned. She didn't. Seeing the Marcos children each day was the equivalent of rubbing salt into a wound. It hurt. Mira did not care for things that hurt her (not that she suspected that anyone would); she had had more than enough of them already in the course of her life.

She had heard all the words about how it would have been suspicious to have that many lottery winners without any families. She had been admonished to mind her own business and reminded that she had her own terms to follow and agreements to keep. That things were taking longer than the initial time frame had laid out was something she never complained about outside the thoughts that plagued her on the nights she sat up wondering how she was going to mange to keep her people alive in a place where it seemed as if every time she turned around something else was attempting to kill them. She knew the length of time would only be laid at her feet. It was made very clear (without her bringing up the topic) that the failure of the plan to go through in a timely fashion had been placed on her as her responsibility. (There were times when she considered the ability to talk to 2149 the bane of her existence.)

So, no, she had no fondness for the Marcos children. They reminded her each time that they ran to hug their father that she had not held her daughter for far longer than she had ever imagined. Each time Sam asked for a story was a reminder that while her child was being fed and housed and had her air filtered, she had no delusions that there was anyone giving her any mothering. Each time Leah asked her father to be careful and come home soon she remembered promising her daughter that she would be coming to get her before she knew it (and remembered that that was a promise that she had not kept). She had no love lost for the Marcos children, but she did her best not to hold it against them. She knew that it was not their fault. She may have been a bit curt when she spoke to them, but she was that to most people from time to time (or on a regular basis). It was not as though she was singling them out.

Then, they became orphans. If she was a woman who believed in luck, she would have considered that occurrence on par with hers. Her group had learned and things were better than the awful days when they had first struck out on their own, but things were hardly what anyone would consider good. They got by - there were occasional better days, but, mostly, getting by was the place where they were stuck. They were balanced on a slim survival line and things were always in a place where it was possible to tip over the edge. They spent most days far closer to that edge than any of them were comfortable with being. There were advantages to being in a group, but the situation had disadvantages as well. Being part of a group, being the leader of a group meant that you were responsible for the group.

She was responsible for this one (and there were still days where she wondered how it was that that had happened). The Marcos children were not an asset. They required more effort and care than they could give back. Without a parent looking out for them, there was some open muttering about where they fit into the group dynamic (and whether they even did). She heard it, but she did not listen (that was characteristic of her style of leadership - always know what the group is thinking, but always stick to what needs doing whether it makes the rest of them happy or not). The Marcos children might not be her favorite people in the world; she might even resent them for being present. Neither of those things changed the fact that they were still her people, and she always looked after her own. She kept them fed. She kept them safe. She also kept them busy (which, really, was just laying the groundwork for making them adults who would be able to keep themselves alive later).

Whether or not they were happy, well, that was not something she bothered herself about. They were here. They were alive, and whatever else might be lurking around stalking them, they could breathe the air without it poisoning them. That left them better off than the majority of the human race as far as she could figure. Anything else was just extra. She might look after the Marcos children as part of the group that was hers, but she was not in the business of handing out extras. After all, the Marcos children were not Sienna, and she was never going to be able to get beyond that. Getting beyond that was not even something that she wanted.


	4. Jim and the Population Control Officers

_Jim and the Population Control Officers_

They have invaded his home. They have torn up their furnishings; they have destroyed any concept they had of privacy. It does not matter to him that they are, technically, justified. They have frightened his child. They have pushed her to tears, and there is not a single one of them that looks even remotely something like sorry to have done so.

His initial response is to be angry. It is the first thing that occurs to him, and it is so automatic that he does not even process that that is what he is thinking and feeling until the words have already come out of his mouth and been hurled in the population control officer's direction. A member of his family is being threatened, and it only makes sense to him to threaten back. It is a standard response from him. It is what he does. If something threatens his family, he is supposed to intercede. That is his place; that is his role. If his daughters cry, he removes the reason for their tears as best he can. He is supposed to be the one who chases away the things in the dark that linger around causing nightmares. This, however, is not a nightmare born from under the bed or behind the cabinets in the kitchens. This is a living, breathing, waking nightmare that they are all trapped in together - nightlights and stories and tucking the blankets up higher will not make it go away.

When his brain catches up to his already speaking mouth, he experiences the type of moment of clarity that he has come to associate with the rush of adrenaline he sometimes gets during the parts of his job that get censored a touch before they are offered up for matrimonial sharing. His daughter is a target. The only way to take the focus off of her is to give them a different target. He needs to provide them with a threat to be dealt with that will take higher precedence than their routine enforcement. It is impulsive; it is only a temporary fix, but he cannot allow his crying child to be manhandled and taken from them.

Then, he realizes. A family is four. The slogan is everywhere. It decorates signs. It appears at the beginning and ending of official messages. It is repeated over and over again in an attempt to ingrain it so far into everyone's thought processes that it will never occur to them to question or disobey or consider other options. A family is four. The words repeat in his head. It is always phrased the same. It is always a family is four. It is never two children only. A family is four.

It is the only chance for a longer lasting solution that he has available to him, and he reaches for it with open hands (or, more literally, with a closed fist) the instant that it occurs to him. A family is four, and there are four Shannons left if he is removed from the picture. He has been a police officer his entire adult life. He knows how policies work. He knows how a standard sentencing runs. This can work. It would never be the plan he would choose if he had other options available to him, but his available options are about as short as the amount of time he has to do something. So, he does. Jim Shannon is a man who will always err on the side of doing.

He quickly finds himself with his hands behind his back being pushed out of the doorway. The last glimpse he sees of his family contains a hurt looking Josh, a confused looking Maddy, a frightened Zoe, and a wife whose hair is curtaining her face as she tries to comfort their youngest and refuses to meet his eyes.

The officer he hit pontificates and rails at him all the way out of the building. Jim does not really hear a word. He is too busy letting his thoughts catch up with all of the spur of the moment actions he has taken. He is too busy deciding that he would not have done anything differently given the same situation even if he had more time to think it through. It worked. That is the part that matters. That is the part that he cares about. The officer is repeating his words from back in the apartment when Jim tunes back in to what he is saying.

The man is right. He will regret this, but it will not be for any of the reasons that he meant when he said the words. He will regret being away from his family. He will regret the way he won't be there for them. He will regret the betrayed look on Josh's face that was the last thing that he saw as he was hustled out of the door. He will regret leaving his wife to manage, care, and provide for their children on her own. He will regret every day that he spends away from them all. He will regret every missed tucking in at night with Zoe, every gushing over something science related (that he tries hard to pretend to understand) with Maddy that he isn't there to witness, and every new song learned on the guitar from Josh that he won't be there to hear. He will regret a great many things he is sure in the days and weeks and months and years to come, but he will never regret the fact that the one member of the Shannon family that had to be taken away from their home today was him and not the little girl in her pajamas still nestled safely in her mother's arms.

He is the doer. He is the protector. He is the one who makes the nightmares go away. This is his place; this is his role. He does not know how to be any other way.


	5. Mark's Grandfather

_Mark's Grandfather (Mark at age 6)_

He knew he was a worrier. It was not a facet of his personality that had been hidden from his notice by some mysterious means through the course of his just over three quarters of a century of living. His family had told him many times over the years that he was too inclined to worry. He often responded that they should give him less to worry over. He had two sons off in less than ideal situations that were always going to be the subject of his concern (no matter how often or how loudly they protested their collective belief that such concern was not a necessity). He worried about his wife (the beloved rock of his life) who was growing more inclined toward periods of confusion with each and every passing day. He had had her by his side for long enough to find the prospect of the loss of her presence to be something that made him uncomfortable to even contemplate. The thought of being the only functionally present adult available to the little boy in their care made him even more so.

He should probably not worry over Mark as much as he did. The little boy always seemed to be happy enough with them. He was full of smiles and loved to be cuddled up with one or the other of them hearing a story (of real people and things from him, of folk tales and fantasy from his wife). He was an easy child - he liked to be with them, but he was equally content to amuse himself. As a matter of fact, he was currently settled under the table again. That was the place that he was always most likely to be found whenever they needed to go looking. It was not a table to Mark. It had always been a fortress or a playhouse to the little boy. It was his special place. What he saw that place as inside his head changed from time to time (in his littlest years from day to day) as he grew and changed and heard more stories and changed his mind about what he wanted to be when it came time for him to be grown. The space under the table had been the moon for weeks now, and he took his presence in that place very seriously. A breathing mask must always cover his face before he ventured over to the calculator that he had taken to hiding under the blanket that he kept there. The Mark of right now was fine enough. He should save his worry for the future that was coming for his grandchild far more quickly than he was ever ready for the future to come.

Mark was a dreamer. He recognized that about his grandson already. He had enough experience to know the signs for what they were. His playing was always themed. He was only ever talking or pretending about being in someplace far, far away. The little boy was loyal and loving, and he never complained about the fact that his father had left him behind. Still, there was a definite glossiness to his eyes whenever he was engrossed in his games that told them he was seeing things far beyond the people he was with and the place where he was.

The boy's father had been a dreamer of far off places and had followed those dreams into a military career. His returns had been few and far between, and the fact that he had shown up to spend one of his breaks between tours at home with an eighteen-month-old in tow and the request that they keep the toddler for him was a very clear indication that the messages they received while he was away were very lacking in details. It hurt a bit to know that he and his wife were so shut out of their youngest's life (and that he had not seen fit to offer them any sort of a warning), but neither of them had so much as paused before agreeing with a look that the child would stay with them. They had taken care of Mark ever since (despite the lack of information that his father offered in relation to his origins), and they were not sorry to have done so. That did not mean that either of them had escaped a certain level of frustration with the manner in which their own child had gone about things.

He had always been as content as he could manage to make himself with his sons' desire to wander. He had recognized early on that it was a fundamental part of what made them them, and he had tried not to stand in their way even when he felt called upon to remind them of the practicalities of their situations. It was hard for him to understand the compulsion that it seemed as if his grandson was inclined to share. He had never wanted to do any wandering. It had never occurred to him to want to leave. He had liked to be where he was with the people that he wanted around him. His wife had remained by his side all these years even if their children had felt the need to spread their wings a little further afield.

They, of course, were not the only pieces of his world that seemed determined to leave him behind. It felt like every passing year erased just a little bit more of the world that he had grown up in and thought that he would have all of his days. He wanted something else for the little boy happily reciting numbers from his place tucked safely away under the table. Wherever his little dreamer's wandering took him, he prayed it would be a place where he would be able to keep the people and things that were most important to him close. It was all that he knew how to hope for for him.


	6. Taylor on Going

_Taylor on Going_

They wanted him to go.

Everyone had heard about the rift - even heartbroken widowers who had little use for news or anything other than burying themselves in work in an attempt to leave them with little to no time to think about what they had lost. Of course, that burying never really worked out the way it was supposed to, but it did leave one with whatever comfort could be garnered from the knowledge that at least something was being accomplished with one's time and effort.

News about the rift had managed to make it through his narrow focus shields - as did most things that could be perceived as potential security threats and the occasional science item that he thought might provide an opening for attempting a conversation with his son. The rift was a bit of both, so he paid more attention to the pieces of chatter that crossed his path than he normally would have. He followed along with the rest of the population as the teams assigned to study the rift did their research and tried to determine exactly where it was that the portal that had so mysteriously opened in the middle of Chicago of all places led. When the chatter turned from rumor to fact and supposition became concrete plans for an attempt at colonization, he thought in a detached sort of a way about what type of security concerns the people involved should be thinking about. He tried (and mostly failed) to engage Lucas in speculation about what the logistics of such a venture would be.

Then, the summons came. They wanted him to go. They did not just want him to go; they wanted him to lead the effort. They wanted him to be responsible for something that was far larger in scope than anything he had done before. He had protected freedoms. He had held off groups devoted to chaos and destruction and even genocide. He had been the commander of soldiers who depended on him to make the appropriate decisions. He had borne the heartache of the times when he had not been able to prevail or succeed.

They were asking more of him now. They were asking him to lead a group of volunteers into a place where they were not entirely certain what it was they would be facing or even if what they were attempting was really, truly possible. They were entrusting him with the responsibility of giving the entirety of the human race a chance to escape from a world that had become increasingly hostile to continued living. If his decisions were the wrong ones, then those under his command would have no option to retreat. If he failed, then he might very well be destroying the only second chance that humanity would ever be offered. That was a great deal of pressure to place on any one person's shoulders. That was a great deal of responsibility to be willing to take. It should have required a great deal of consideration.

It took far less than it should have taken. He knew that. He just chose not to spend his time thinking about the why. He would go. He had been asked to perform a service, and he had been performing the service that had been asked of him for the vast majority of his life. It was what he did. He went where he was sent. He did his level best to accomplish the tasks that were given to him. Terra Nova would be no different. He would go. He would lead. He would accept the responsibility.

He told them he would go. He made certain requests. They quickly agreed that he could have the personnel he had requested. They seemed very eager to have him go; they required as little time to agree that he could have what he wanted as he had to agree to accept the commission. Under normal circumstances, he would have found that slightly suspicious. He knew that. He, again, chose not to think about it too deeply. He was certain that they had their reasons just as he knew that he had his own. He knew that what he was doing could be construed as running, but he felt as if he had been handed an opportunity to push forward in the only way that seemed as if it had a possibility of truly working.

There were many pictures taken and press conferences hosted. He made his way through them as best as he could. Public relations appearances were not his cup of tea. Ayani would have laughed herself silly at watching him grumble as he got ready to go to yet another event in the lead up to his departure. It was good to think of her laughing (the ache in his heart seemed to pulse with just a bit less intensity when he could think of her laughing). He muddled his way through as best he could without her hand at his elbow to guide him through the social niceties.

The day, at long last, arrived. He had had his goodbyes with Lucas in what had become their typical stoic fashion. He seemed distracted and busy with projects, and he told himself that it was good to see his son finding his own way forward.

There was a chance that something could go wrong. There were infinite chances of something going wrong. He did not bother to think of more than ten or twelve of them. He found he could not summon up much in the way of apprehension. Something going colossally wrong would lead him back to his wife. There was nothing to disturb his piece of mind in that. Any other slightly wrong variables would be dealt with as they came. He had lived his whole life in that manner; he could see no reason to change that now. He was sure that he made a striking figure in all of their videos in consequence as he strode forward with his head held high to be the first to make his way through the newly constructed portal.

It was an odd sensation as he stepped through, and the air felt odder still in his lungs. He took the focused breaths that the med team had suggested and forced himself to blink through the brightness of the light that was accosting his eyes to assess the safety of the scene. Everything seemed to be clear at the moment, but his nerves were on edge with the knowledge that he was rather blind in regards to what might be coming at him with little to no warning.

He turned to face the spot where he had found himself at the end of that first step and waited for the person that should have been essentially on his heels.

He would be waiting for a very long time.


	7. Lucas

_Lucas_

He was sent to Terra Nova to work. He had been recruited early (before his father had been actually) by those who saw the potential beyond the idealism that was pouring out in the face of the discovery of the rift. All they had waited for was confirmation from the probe that they were sitting on what it was that they thought they were sitting on and plans had started being laid out for the best method to proceed. He was integral to those plans. He had, in due time, been sent out to work from the far end. His grasp of theoretical physics far outweighed his lack of practical engineering application experience, and he was not entirely certain that those pulling the strings behind the scenes actually understood that differentiation anyway. He was not inclined to enlighten them. There was a plan, and he was implementing it. That was his focus.

Being exiled to wander around the jungle had not been a part of the plan. There were a lot of things that had not been a part of any plan. He was not a fan of things not working out the way that he wanted them to (he operated under the assumption that any person with a speck of honesty would admit to being the same). Still, he knew the odds of any plan being brought to completion without something deviating from the outlined course of events were incredibly low. He did not enjoy that, but he was practical enough to recognize that that was the way that it was. It was why contingency plans existed. It was why there were times when contingency plans all needed to be thrown out and adlibbing needed to become the order of the day.

That's what he did after he watched his father shoot his designated replacement in front of the portal. They really should have known better. If there was one piece of the whole puzzle that he had never been able to make fit into its proper place, it was why they had ever allowed his father to be placed in command of this project in the first place. He was not the type to embrace what they were going to accomplish. If they thought that he would merely step down quietly when faced with a command from an unexpected superior officer, then he could have told them how wrong they were. After all, it would not be the first time that his father had abandoned what should have been the proper response to his responsibilities for some random sense of believing that something else was more important. He was living proof of that.

It did not matter (or it would eventually not matter any longer). It changed the timeline. It did not change the endgame. He could work in the jungle just the same as he could work in the settlement. As a matter of fact, there were things that he appreciated more about doing his work in the jungle. There were, of course, the troublesome necessities of finding supplies and avoiding certain aspects of the natural world with which he was now living up close and personal. Those were annoyances. They were time wasters that had to be gone through in order to keep himself well enough to do what needed to be done.

There were still things to like about his sojourn. There was no need to hide what it was that he was doing. There was no need to try to offer explanations. There was no need to pretend to get along with other people or spend time doing required work for the set-up of the colony (which was all worthless because it was not even going to be a colony any longer when he was finished with his project). There was no need to attempt to play civil with his father. There was no need to find reasons to try to avoid Alicia and her blasted little disappointed shakes of her head (as if she had any right to pretend that she was in any way, shape, or form still an actual part of his life).

He could breathe out in the cover of the trees and the colorful plants and the animals that sometimes looked like something out of a dream and sometimes like something out of a nightmare. It was what it was with no pretenses. There was no need for him to wear a mask. He got to be him in a way that he had not gotten to simply be him since before that time that he was not going to think about no matter how much the sounds of the wildlife around him blended into a background of seeming quiet.

There were other things that he chose not to think about as he worked on his equations and theories and learned (at times via the hard, painful way) to pay at least partial attention to his surroundings even when he was on the trail of a new idea that was particularly engaging. He did not choose to think about the fact that he was surviving out in the jungle on his own. He did not choose to think about the fact that he was proving capable and quick on his feet and able to come up with nonstandard solutions to the challenges which he faced. He did not choose to think of the fact that he was doing quite well on his own because the little voice in the back of his head that whispered that he knew someone else who had been left on his own out in this jungle to fend for himself and had learned to thrive in it had to be kept quiet. It could not be allowed to speak. It could not be allowed to draw his attention. It had to be shut up in whatever manner did so most quickly and expediently because if there was one thing that was never, ever allowed to be contemplated, it was the idea that he had anything in common with his father.


	8. Mr Tate

_Mr. Tate_

He misses his girls. It is such a trite thing to say, but it the only phrasing he knows that he can manage. He could say that it aches to know that he cannot get to them. He could say that he finds himself staring at the last picture he has of the two of them trying to trace out how his daughter's features will have changed in the time that he has been away from them. He could say a lot of things; he does not say any of them. Whenever the topic manages to come up in conversation (usually because someone on one of the science teams who came alone and does not have anyone to follow later is making some awful attempt at small talk during the course of an OTG assignment), he settles for a shrug of his shoulders, a gruff comment that he misses them, and the kind of look that clues the person in question into the fact that it is better to drop the subject.

It is a topic that most of them avoid here - talking about the families that they left behind when they came to this place. It was a risk that they all took - that something would go wrong and the promise that their families would be coming after them would never materialize. So, they do not do a lot of mentioning about what they miss. It is an unspoken agreement of sorts. Even when the first of the families started coming through with the Fourth Pilgrimage, they still stayed mostly quiet. It was nice to see - that the promise was being kept. No one wanted to sound churlish about the fact that their families had not gotten to be first. What mattered was the reaffirmation that they would, in fact, be coming. They all just had to hang on until their turn rolled around.

It was not as if missing their families was something that they were not used to (or should be at least). They had all been deployed. They all knew what it was like to be away. They all knew what it was like to have their children grow up on them in these seeming sudden bursts between leaves and time off between tours. It was, in theory, nothing that they all had not dealt with for years. That did not change the fact that there was something decidedly different about knowing that there was no way to get back to them at all. He tried not to think about that whenever he could avoid it. He imagined that most of the others did the same. It was another of those things that they did not talk about.

He gets to be a part of the greeting party for the Fifth Pilgrimage with the finally stable and functional portal that should make the people coming through appear at the predetermined spot. He knows that they are supposed to be on the list of those coming this time. He knows that it is finally his turn to have his family with him. There is a part of him that is a little afraid to look forward to it until he actually sees them.

It is the first time since he was a very new recruit that he actually has to force himself to remain still. He finds himself wanting to bounce up and down on the balls of his feet in an attempt to get rid of some of his nervous energy. He thinks that maybe he was not the best choice for guard duty on this occasion - that he may be too distracted to do his job properly. He also thinks that Commander Taylor probably knows that and chose to send him anyway (he notices that everyone whose families are due has been included).

Part of him is glad that his family is coming though on a trip that will have guards and medics standing immediately by on their arrival and another part of him thinks that he would not care in the slightest if they ended up coming through in the middle of another body of water as long as it got them here. He does not have much time to think those sort of thoughts because the Pilgrimage has started.

There are a whole series of people that do not really register in his head. He will take time to notice them later - right now all he can think is "not her, not her." It is Skye coming through the portal that snaps him out of his semi stupor. She has grown so much since the last time that he saw her, but he would know her anywhere - no matter how much bigger or how much older or how much prettier she had gotten. He is moving toward her when Deb steps through, and it is all that he can do not to break into a run to get to the two of them. There are medics offering them infusers, but all that he sees clearly is the smile on Skye's face as she shouts "Daddy!" and the tears in Deb's eyes as she reaches out to pull him toward her. They sort of crumble into a tangled heap of a group hug on the ground, and he cannot bring himself to care who is watching or how unprofessional he may be being. He is not the only one, but it would not matter to him if he was.

The only things that matter are that his two girls are in his arms. They are here, and he is here. There will be no more missing them. There will be no more comforting himself with pictures and lists of all of the things that he wants to show them and all of the stories that he wants to tell. He will never again have to imagine how much taller Skye will be when next he sees her. He will never again be leaving the two of them behind. The three of them are here in the same place, and that is not going to change.

He cannot stop smiling as they make their way back to Terra Nova - Skye tucked under his arm while his fingers are entwined with Deb's. They are all together now, and they have all the time in the world to enjoy it.


End file.
